


different colours, different shades

by Wallyallens



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, RipFic, post rip being un-brainwashed, the rest of the team are mentioned, this is a ripsara/time canary fic, when he realised what he has done and basically This Poor Boy does guilt like no other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 10:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9652673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: Rip gets his right mind back, free of the Legion's programming - and it is not a victorious return. He remembers everything he has done - he remembers killing Sara - and that hurts more than any torture they could have put him through combined. Luckily, Sara is having none of that crap and is right there with him.





	

 

It all comes back to him in a wave of emotion so intense he staggers backwards, grabbing onto a wall to keep from falling and clutching on so tightly the pale bones of his knuckles shone through his thin skin. Rip couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. Because the Legion of Doom had not taken his memories when they scrambled his brain – only his connection to them.

For the entire time, Rip could remember every moment he ever spent with the team. With Sara.

He just couldn’t _feel_ them.

And without them, he had nothing. His family were dead. The Time Masters had betrayed him. And if he didn’t love the team he had recruited, as he so dearly did, then Rip Hunter was truly, terrifyingly and devastatingly _alone_. That was enough to make anyone dangerous.

Truth be told, he didn’t feel much of anything at all when he had been under the Legion’s control. It had been a hollowness which sat in his ribcage, some smoking dark creature which purred and filled his lungs with smoke whenever he tried to take a breath. It didn’t let him feel love or care, it kept him feeling nothing, an absence of emotion – and he had hurt them. He had hurt _her_. And it had meant nothing to him.

So when all that caring and empathy comes rushing back like a cord has been snapped inside him, it’s so fierce in its desire and longing that it almost kills him, he thinks.

“Rip?”

It takes a long few minutes for him to hear his name being called. It’s hard to pay attention to anything when the entire world is crushing you, wanting you to collapse, waiting for you to reach the end of your rope and begin to freefall. Rip gasped and fell further down the wall. He knew his knees were pulled up to his chest and the edges of his vision were going dark, as his chest ached so harshly and his eyes burned and the inhuman choking sound dully filling the void around him was his own pained whimpering. It just didn’t matter.

Nothing did.

He was – he was a _monster_ , a _thing_ , he deserved to be locked in a fucking _cage_ and –

“ _Rip_.”

It is Sara's voice, and it cuts like a knife through everything. It always had. It is sharp and precise and steady, and that was her all over. In the tunnel of his blurred vision, her face shimmers somewhere in the distance, a bright yellow of her hair and soft curve of her lips, but he can’t reach her. She is in a foreign land while he is floundering out to sea. But she is real, he thinks. She is still there, still breathing – no thanks to him.

When she puts a hand cautiously on his arm, Rip blacks out completely.

He knows he cried out, and he jumped away from the touch, and the next time he can see anything he has moved, and she is kneeling a few feet away. And she looks scared. That is right: he knows she should be scared. Of _him._ She should hate him. She shouldn’t even be there, she should be gone, she should have left him there to die in quiet despair and never once think of him again.

He had hurt her. He had _killed_ her.

God, he had killed _Sara_.

“Rip, please,” Sara says. She is still there faintly, reaching out a hand towards him which hangs in the air close to him. There is a bright fear in her eyes, and her brow is creased in pain, and when she speaks, her voice shakes. Behind her, there are figures, dark shapes which he knew somewhere in his crumbling mind to be the team, but only Sara has approached him. “We need to go. We need to get out of here – you’re safe now, Rip. We saved you. I’ve got you. But we need to go.”

“No-”

Rip is barely aware that he is speaking. The voice that escapes his mouth is croaky and filled with sawdust, a voice unused for weeks. When the other man walked inside of him, the one who could not feel, he had spoken with Rip’s mouth, but never his _voice_ – the shape of the words were crueller, more deadly, and calm in a way Rip never was. He spoke devoid of anything but the words itself.

Rip’s voice shook, and died in his throat. It quaked with the waves of emotion hitting him.

He shook his head, hard. It made the world fade again. Rip pushed away from her, down the wall which bit into his head and hands, curling up tighter, trying to block her out. If anyone could bring him back to the surface fully, it was Sara. Of course it was Sara. But he didn’t deserve to walk around freely and think straight and speak and _feel_ again. He wouldn’t let her fix him.

“Rip, you’re back-”

Sara reached out once more, insistently, and Rip jumped away. The way his head hit the wall left a streak of copper red there, drawing blood, and he screamed. “ _Don’t touch me_!”

“We need to go,” Sara pleaded.

This was the first time he noticed her face was glistening, shining with tears. That pulled her closer. The tunnel collapsed, and there she was, right there in front of him, and he could finally see her clearly. Rip sucked in a loud breath. He blinked at her, but she didn’t disappear. She was there. _She was there._ Experimentally, as if he were in a dream, he leaned towards her, the glaze in his eyes clearing to give him one moment of clarity.

Sara was real. And she wouldn’t leave him.

“Go,” he said, loudly. It cracked halfway through the word. Rip saw the flash of hurt this caused as it rippled across her features, and knew it was right – if she hated him, that was right. She needed to leave him there. “ _Go!_ Get out! I – just _leave_.”

“Not without you.”

God, he had forgotten how stubborn she could be. Sara set her jaw and spoke without hesitation, with as much conviction as he had.

“LEAVE ME.”

“Not happening.”

“I – I don’t deserve this. I don’t,” Rip shook his head again, turning his back on her. The curl of his body pressed against the wall, and his weak voice drizzled out. “Just leave me here. Just go.”

“Rip, you are worth saving. That wasn’t you. None of it was you.”

His voice broke, “But I remember it.”

“We don’t have time for this,” A new voice spoke, blunt and gruff and _Mick_. A dark shape moved closer, and Rip saw a fist approaching, felt it hit, and then didn’t think much of anything at all as the darkness closed in around him. The last thing he heard was Sara’s exhausted, sad sigh.

*

Rip woke suddenly. Although his head felt foggy, full of cotton wool, it took him only a minute to push himself up and see the room around him – his old quarters. He was in his bed, the room empty. And no - that wasn’t right.

Quickly, he stood, finding the world remained steady under his feet. That was a surprise.

Then Rip began to walk. It was an even bigger shock that his door was unlocked, and when a rush of air entered as it opened, there was nobody on the other side. There should have been a guard, for he was surely a prisoner – after all he had done, why was he not locked up? Why was he allowed to step out into the corridor like it was any other day, and he had just been sleeping for a long time?

“No,” he breathed, picking up his pace as his bare feet slapped against the metal floor. “No, no, no.”

When he came across Ray in the hallway, the other man froze in place. “Rip!”

Ray looked hopeful. Rip couldn’t face him. Not even stopping, Rip breezed past Ray, twisting so his back was to the wall and he didn’t touch the other man. Although he heard Ray calling his name, Rip didn’t stop until his feet took him to his destination – keying in the code, Rip stepped past the gliding doors and didn’t breathe steadily again until he heard them lock behind him.

The cell in the brig turned red for a moment as the doors locked. He stumbled over to the bench, tripping and catching it with one hand. Lowering himself to the floor, Rip felt the coolness beneath him as he sat with the bench at his back, legs a jumbled pile. For a few minutes, he was allowed the peace of the glass cell, taking deep breaths and trying to stop his trembling hands. The effort of getting there had left him shaking and tired again, like his body had been in a coma for these past few weeks, and now it was not used to the waking world.

This was where he belonged.

 _Let the numbness sink in_ , he thought. _Feel nothing. Go dead inside._

Because feeling would be a relief he no longer deserved; what he had done was so black and vile a thing that it was too big to face, too impossible. It would destroy him. He would fall into the void of his guilt like a black hole, and he would never surface again, if he faced it. Better to feel nothing at all and hold on to this small part of himself, so he could never hurt them again.

Unfortunately, as he expected, his peace could not last. The Team filed into the room after a few minutes in various states of undress – led, naturally, by the one person he couldn’t look in the eye.

Sara stood outside the doors, just watching him for a moment. Behind her back, the others exchanged glances, of worry – and on Jax’s face, he saw relief. At least one of them was sensible enough to recognise that he was a danger to them, and could never be their captain again, and belonged in a hole much worse than this cell. But as soon as Jax noticed Rip’s eyes on him, the expression changed from relief to guilt, the younger man looking away quickly.

Rip tore his own gaze back to the shaking hand in his lap.

“Rip.”

Sara spoke, but he did not look up at her. Rip felt his head shake slightly, against his will, trying to block her out.

“Rip, look at me.”

“No,” he shook his head more violently, rocking slightly. “Please. This is – this is right. I should be in here. Just let me – I – I need to be in here.”

“You don’t,” she replied. “All the Legion’s programming is gone now. Gideon checked.”

“Gideon could be wrong.”

“No, she can’t be. You know that.”

“I _don’t_.” Rip hated the way his voice cracked. He needed them to understand, to know how bloody scared he was that he would wake up and not be him anymore, and be trapped in a mind which wouldn’t let him think or feel again. That one day, he would just break, and die again. Next time, she might not come back. Bloody hell - he could still smell her blood after he shot her, still _taste_  on the tip of his tongue and feel her face under his hand as he had _taunted_ her about it. Rip was going to be sick. “What if he – _I_ – what if I hurt you again? No, no. It’s safer for everyone if I’m in here. This is where I belong after everything – after what I did. No more.”

Vaguely, he was aware how unhinged he sounded. But his thoughts came too fast to filter them, pressing against him in a violent assault, and spilled free of his lips in short bursts of desperation.

“This isn’t what you deserve, stop saying that!”

For the first time, Sara sounded angry. It flared across her tone like a sunspot, and finally Rip managed to drag his eyes up to her face from his position on the floor. She was standing much closer to the glass than the others, close enough that her left hand grazed it as it dangled by her side; her face was torn with frustration, but her eyes were so worriedly soft, the lights bouncing off them.

“Rip. I know you’re scared. After what the Legion did to you – nobody would be okay after that. But what you did – it wasn’t you. _They_ hurt me. You – Rip Hunter – the man I _know_ and trust – you never would.”

Slowly, Rip stood. No longer was the world steady beneath his feet, for his legs shook and made it hard to stand, with heaving breaths wracking his lungs. When he moved, Jax took a step closer to Sara. It was a relief to know that if he lost it again – someone would stop him. Rip really hoped Jax would have the _mercy_ to shoot him next time. Because it wouldn’t be murder, it would be a release from any potential harm he could cause, and Rip would be grateful for it.

“I already _have_ ,” he said, lips numb. _Go dead inside_. “I don’t – I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve to walk around and have a life and _forgiveness_. I – I belong in here. Or an island or a cave or a bloody _box_. I don’t – I _can’t_ . . . ”

He stepped back, bending at the waist, like it was a bullet hole in his own stomach and not hers. Rip made a fist and slammed it into his own chest. The brief thud of pain anchored him.

The tears straining to make him weak, to make him collapse and let her in, were threatening to overspill his eyes. Rip couldn’t allow that. He gasped, straightened, and faced her. The others stopped existing. There was only Sara, and him, and the void between the home he left and the barren wasteland he had returned to. Sometimes, the place you left wasn’t the place waiting for you when you got back. Sometimes, the journey changed you, and home was not home anymore. He was not the Rip Hunter who had laughed with her, or fought with her, or quietly loved Sara Lance for months before the world tore them apart. He was someone entirely new now, and that person didn’t even deserve to _look_ at her, let alone be loved by her.

Whispering, like he was in a holy place, he spoke the words he was running from.

“I _killed_ you, Sara. And that’s not something I would survive – a world without you in it.”

“Rip . . .” Sara blinked, and a tear tracked down her face. Shaking herself a little, she pressed the button on her left, and stepped into the cell with him before anyone could react. The doors slid shut and locked behind her, Jax’s palm slamming into it a moment later.

“Sara!” the younger man shouted. Jax’s face was older now than it had been. He stood straighter, and wore his fear like a scar. Right then, he looked terrified for her, banging against the glass as he pressed the keypad with his other hand. “Sara, open the door! He’s not safe!”

“Yes he is,” she replied. In the room with him now, Rip’s focus gravitated to her in a way he could not control. Sara had always been so bright – she shone, but now he could see the dark circles around her eyes and the unsteady way she held her hands in front of her. “Rip won’t hurt me.”

“Don’t,” Rip pleaded, stepping away from her. His own hands moved towards hers – but to keep her away. He didn’t know what would happen if he touched her. Would he kill her? Kiss her? Never let her go?

The last time he had touched her, it had been to choke the life out of her. Rip had held her by the throat and squeezed to extract the information he needed; he had looked her in the eyes as she struggled for air, felt her pulse against his fingertips as he drained the life out of her. He could still feel it hammering there. It had been so slow and fragile, a bird in his hand, struggling to be free. And he had only clutched her tighter for it. He had _squeezed_ , feeling her life slip away -

The last time he had touched her, he had snapped her neck. Rip remembered the crack, how the bone had collapsed under his palm, and he had just – he had just _left_ her there. He had killed her with those hands, and he couldn’t touch her with them again. Never again.

“I killed you, Sara! You died, _again_ , because of me.”

“No,” she shook her head. “Not because of you. And I came back – I do that.”

Sara’s face unbelievably creased into a gentle, watery smile. She looked at him unblinkingly, without doubt in those blue eyes, taking a step closer. Her lips were curved and pressed together. She shook her head as she did, laughing a little.

“You always did wear your heart on your sleeve, Rip. I see it. _I see you_.” She smiled at him again, even as her tears fell, walking towards him in slow steps, as he stood frozen, unable to look away. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t escape. All he could do was look at her. “I see your pain even though you try to hide it, and your _heart_ , and your fear, and your goodness. I know exactly who you are. And you’re not a monster, and you did not kill me – you never could. You are – you are the _kindest_ and most honourable man I have ever known, Rip. I am – and have always been – safe with you.”

“Please, stay away-”

She shook her head, wearing that smile again now. Sara was close enough to smell now, close enough to touch –

“You once held me and told me that I could be better,” she said, closing the distance. Her hand closed around his arm, pushing it away with no resistance. Rip was standing limply now, all the fight gone out of him, as she reached up on her tiptoes to put a hand on his face, her fingers cupping his cheek. She was so close to him. As she did, face an inch away from his own, so she was all he could see, she nodded and looked so hopeful that maybe he could believe, too, and said simply – “And so can you.”

The first sob left him as a hurricaine, and Rip cracked. He dropped to his knees, feeling the tears rushing down his face, enough to drown the world, torrential – and he held her tightly. Hands woven into the fabric of her t-shirt as he knelt and wrapped his arms around her middle, Rip sobbed and held on for dear life, feeling Sara’s hands wound in his hair and by his shoulder moments later, holding him right back.

“I’m sorry, I’m so _sorry_ , oh God, Sara. I – I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Rip went on like that, crying and apologising, for what felt like eternities. She held him back, shushing him gently and fingertips rubbing circles into his shoulders, letting him get it all out. Rip did. He didn’t hold back. The floods came, until there was nothing left. Rip felt empty when the tears trickled to a stop, leaving him gasping with a chest which burned, but not hollow in the way he had been under the Legion’s control – he felt free of them. As if his own tears had washed away the sins of the crimes he commited.

But that wasn’t all the absolution he needed.

He gasped and leaned back on his heels, looking up at her again, finding Sara’s eyes as red and puffy as his own must have been. And she still looked like an angel; like his saving grace.

“I’m so sorry.”

Sara looked at him with a head tilted to one side and lips pressed together but trembling, then kneeled down to his level. She kept a hold of him as she did, maintaining contact, and grabbed him by the elbows, faces close together. Her eyes were so close now. From this angle, he could map the freckles scattered across her cheeks like an astral map to guide him home. He could see her – really see her, all of Sara’s humanity and huge capacity for forgiveness, her loneliness and her light, and she was everything.

She spoke gently, “I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“But that’s my decision,” she replied, one hand drifting to the back of his neck and holding him steady. “And I do. You’re _forgiven_. Not that it was you at all – _this_ , right here and now, that’s you. This is who you are. Rip Hunter . . . my Rip.”

She held him tighter when she said that, squeezing lightly, before her hand on his neck pulled him forward, until Rip’s forehead pitched into hers. She kept her hand on his head, closing her eyes for a moment, but he didn’t blink. He couldn’t stop looking at her, nor did he want to. He could have stayed in this moment forever. When she opened her eyes and saw him watching her, those lips curved into a smile once more.

“We live the next day,” she said quietly, echoing his words back to him. “We get better.”

“What if I can’t?”

“You can. I did. You helped me, so now you have me to do the same. Rip – all we can do is try. We fight a battle against _time itself_ that at best, we can postpone but never stop, because time goes on and on and on. But we fight while we can because that’s what we do. We protect. We hold the tide at bay. We find the next battle, and the next, and then at the end of the day we have each other. That’s all we need.”

“I love you,” Rip said. There was no point lying. It was the truth, and it time was truly against them and all they had was the next day, then there was no reason not to finally say it.

“Good,” Sara replied, smiling, and it was such a _Sara_ thing to say that he laughed a little, too. It felt on in his chest. With the laughter shifted the weight of the guilt. “That means you have to keep fighting. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Welcome home, Rip,” she whispered. Her gentle breath brushed against him as she held his face gently. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m so sorry I had to go away,” he said, “I was trying to protect you all.”

“I know. But next time, clue me in on the plan. Because a part of that plans _always_ has to be saving you, too.”

Rip nodded weakly. “No more walls.”

“No more walls,” she agreed, “Including this one.”

Sara leaned away, the brightness of the cell and the absence of her hurting Rip’s eyes as she did. She stood, holding his hands in hers, until he was pulled up beside her, and began to walk backwards, leading him out of the cell. It still felt wrong to him, but she was smiling at him, that Rip could try. He stood, the team watching the both of them, pretending that they hadn’t heard him say _I love you_ , not that he would ever want it un-said. It was out there now. And it was _true_.

He looked at them, the faces around him painfully familiar, making Rip realised with a fierce ache how much he had missed them – all of them. Taking away his love for them was the worst punishment the Legion could have administered. They were his sort-of, maybe family, and he belonged with them.

“Can any of you forgive me?” he asked, looking around at them.

It was Jax who spoke first, stepping forward and extending a hand to shake. “It’s good to have you back, Captain.”

Rip could have cried again, at that. He didn’t deserve their forgiveness – but he would earn it, he swore by all the stars above them. Taking Jax’s hand, he shook it, before the younger man caved and pulled him in closer, tucking him into a hug. And even before, Rip didn’t hug, so it was a foreign feeling – and he loved it. Rip held Jax back, letting his eyes fall shut.

Ray grinned and joined in the hug, and they all laughed, albeit weakly.

The professor shook his hand, Mick slapped him on the shoulder, and the two new faces on the ship – Amaya and Nate, as they introduced themselves, nodded in his direction with curious eyes. The entire time, Sara stayed to his side like glue, keeping one hand on him, squeezing when he looked overwhelmed.

It felt like finally coming home, and the Waverider changed around him.

“Gideon?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain Hunter?”

The voice was the same as ever, and he smiled. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“The pleasure was mine, Captain Hunter. Although I agree with Captain Lance – next time you decide to attempt a near-suicidal plan, let me help you. It would end better for everyone. It’s good to see you, Captain.”

“And you, Gideon,” he replied.

“Come on,” Sara said at his side, taking his hand and holding his arm. She looked up at him with bright eyes, and he loved her more and more with each heartbeat. “We were just having breakfast. It’s a new day, Rip.”

And when it came out of her lips, Rip could believe it. It wasn’t easy. He could still remember everything he had done with perfect clarity, and the hand in hers twitched at the thought of being wrapped around her neck. No words or actions could ever erase that. It wasn’t a magic fix, or a switch to be flipped to make everything go back to normal – that was impossible.

But he could try today, and tomorrow, and the next day. Things could get better again. He could hold her on some days and never let a dark thought cross his mind, and others lock himself in his room with clenched fists until the flashbacks stopped. Recovery was never a perfect solution. But he was not alone, and he was fighting each day, and when Sara smiled at him like that?

Well, Rip could do anything.

He nodded at her, “Let’s go see what it holds.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from New Dawn Fades. Was originally going to be much much longer with WEEKS of Rip living in the shamecube and Sara slowly reaching out to him, but I was Emo and Tired so now it is what it is. Let me know if you liked :)


End file.
